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Posting AC because I've already moderated here, but felt compelled to respond.

Our educational system is NOT for training their workers but to have an educated electorate.

Actually, if you look at the history of the American public education system, you'll see that it was built PRECISELY for both "training their workers", and maintaining a populace not so given to the kind of unpredictable innovation and individualism that tended to make the long term plans and investments of the robber barons more uncertain and less profitable. Have a look at http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.h... - page 58 is a good place to start reading stuff that's immediately relevant to the current discussion.

I strongly recommend anyone having an interest in the history, purpose, function, and failings of public education, to look up the work of John Taylor Gatto. If nothing else, it will at least present you with a view of education that you may not have previously considered. I found it to be a real eye-opener.

-- jenningsthecat

A little Bill Gates philosophy that helps explain how Windows got this way: http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html

Ha! You mean to tell me that all those kids who 10-20 years ago were getting a shit education grew up to be adults that don't know shit? Say it isn't so! Next thing you'll tell me is that correlation isn't causation and there is some bigger root cause we just haven't figured out yet.

There's a cause alright, and it's quite deliberate.

MS Contempt© has been an integral part of MS product development long before the Office Ribbon. Favorite Bill Gates quote from an interview back in the late 1990s: "I can't think of a worse reason than fixing bugs to release new version of software." I remember seeing that in ComputerWorld circa 1996 but sadly can't lay my hands on the original article. This, though, captures the sense, and indeed may actually be the interview from which ComputerWorld extracted and paraphrased the quote.

And did you ever try to open a "NEW. IMPROVED" MS Office product's files with your same old, unimproved MS Office Product? Contempt© or just good marketing? Or is there a difference?

The original

Six Lesson Schoolteacher

The US public school system works exceedingly well.

Read this. Much of the public school system focuses on rote memorization (where not appropriate) and teaching to the test. True understanding is abandoned for higher test scores (due in part to garbage such as No Child Left Behind).

The answer isn't to privatize; the answer is to fix the schools. If you're relying on test scores to see if there is a problem, then that is part of the problem. No, I'm not talking about a few failed schools. I didn't live in a large urban district and yet left high school knowing only equations and having no true understanding of anything.

Yeah, I mean, just look at how crappy everything is in Europe. A democratic disaster. Obviously public schooling is the root of all evil.

Hehe that's so cute, the way you can write a one-liner dismissing something in a nice smug way instead of informing yourself about it. All of that is just too much work! Besides, it makes you feel good about yourself like that other guy must just be such an idiot! I mean, actually putting forth a viewpoint and trying to contribute, what was he thinking?! 'Course, you know that's the only way a lot of people ever feel "good" about anything.

thank you my good sir, for this eye opening expression of my trip through the Florida Public School system.

Being a student in Florida most everything from 4th grade onward was centered around FCAT, 4th grade is where they introduced us to writing(based on the FCAT model) and said that the FCAT would determine our eligibility to pass to the next grade.

I also was one of the students that got to play test subject for the FCAT science "Beta" if you can call it. We were told that our score for our FCAT science(10th grade) did not matter in regards to our overall passing our final FCAT. First thing I noticed about the FCAT science was that I had never been taught the information being tested. Our science test, told to us later by several teachers, was focused on air/space science, basic stuff that if requested I might be able to logically work through today; in the 10th grade I had no idea what some if not most of the questions were asking. I had a Biology class, a Chemistry class, and some other basic science classes most of which focused on teaching the scientific method, and none of which taught any great measure of air/space.

This article:

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

actually makes sense to me, I can look back and analyze the foundation of my many personality flaws, and my problems, and link them to aspects of this article. As much as this New York teacher wanted this to be ironic, I can taste the truth in his words.

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

This model has always been along the lines of death by 1,000 cuts. We cannot continue to be so blind to yet another "slip" of the proverbial knife. It won't be the last if the masses continue to ignore it.

So, remind me again of who educated those masses during the most impressionable years of their lives?

It's really amazing the way the cause-and-effect of a situation can be right there, flashing a 1000-watt light, smacking people in the face, screaming at them for attention, grabbing their nutsacs and twisting them horribly ... and the reaction from the masses of people is "huh what? did I just notice something ... nah, must have been my imagination ... back to football, beer, celebrity gossip, left-right politics, organized religion, and following the latest fads for me!"

You have to hand it to the actual controllers of things. They operate with a level of mastery that would be beautiful if it weren't so goddamned terrible and dehumanizing.

Obviously this happens because people are generally stupid (don't take it as a flamebait, it's just an observation), and people vote for those, who promise them something regardless of long term consequences.

What do you expect? They're government educated by a system that is more concerned about not hurting anyone's feelings than it is with things like dialectic, critical thinking, and instilling intellectual independence. Most are far too passive (something promoted in the media by repeated example) to recognize this as a problem on their own and educate themselves despite the Information Age. This page sums it up nicely. The "lesson of dependency" is the hinge on which all the others rest.

I'll highlight the most glaring stupidity of this proposal, the unspoken and unacknowledged aspect it deliberately ignores.

There is some content on the Internet that "any normal human being would be offended by," he said.

... that you almost definitely won't see unless you are looking for it. It reminds me of people who call up a talk show to tell the host how much they hate him, his views, and his show ... yet they're quite familiar with all of it. You'd think a person would go with one of the multitude of other choices and listen to something other than whatever he finds offensive, but that would mean having nothing to bitch about. Nothing to bitch about would mean being denied their five minutes of climbing up on their high horse and feeling superior to someone else while they pontificate against them. This is very important to nothing human beings with no real sense of purpose in their lives and would be a great loss to them.

There are things I don't like so I don't watch them, listen to them, read them, etc, but it never occurs to me to feel offended. I don't get any pleasure or satisfaction from trying to force my will on others because I'm not an insecure fevered ego. If I were, I'd feel a sacred duty to work on fixing it while never making it someone else's problem. So, the fact that I don't enjoy something doesn't make me feel like no one else should (assuming it's just a matter of taste -- i.e. I don't feel that way about armed robbery -- since some of you are childish and jump all over every little thing not spelled out for you).

"I'm offended!" is a covert and thus cowardly way of saying "therefore, you should yield to me and change it to accommodate my tastes". It's an emotional appeal unconsciously designed to conceal a desire to control. The people who want to control others using this method are far too timid to try gaining any kind of domination or power to get what they want, so they go for the pity appeal instead. They try to gain the sympathy of someone who already has power or authority and by proxy obtain the control they desire. If they are thwarted, they accuse the authority of being insensitive and try to ridicule or shame (i.e. manipulate) them into doing their will.

The minority who weren't looking for "offensive" material and saw it anyway were duped by crapflooders, goatse trolls and the like. These are the same disruptive types who aren't going to respect censorship laws. They would view them as a challenge. If anything, using Tor or some other international, jurisdiction-crossing proxy to evade censorship would only add to their thrill.

How do you fit him into the American school system?

If you have a shred of decency/humanity/mercy within you, then you don't. Maybe some reading or also some more reading will help to make the point. Public school in the USA basically amounts to training in subservience and passivity. This one is likely to have a great deal of friction with it.

Otherwise having him instructed in a martial art would be a great start. It will provide two benefits: discipline and focus, and the ability to deal with bullies who will hassle him because he stands out.

The problem is with the teaching, people are taught very poorly... They are not taught general concepts, they are taught specific of particular applications so if they were to learn Libreoffice people would complain that it's not what working environments are using.

You see half of the problem. That much I can say with certainty. But do you see why it is not going to be solved, why those who make the decisions and control the curriculum, who could solve it in short order, will never voluntarily do so?

Can you take the next step and see the other half? It's simple: it is 100% deliberate. The "educators" have thoroughly explored psychology and development and the learning process. They cannot claim ignorance as an excuse for why the average American is frankly so damned stupid, docile, and undiscerning. For example, they know that students taught to read via phonics greatly outperform those taught with the "whole word" methods. Those taught with phonics are often several grade levels ahead of their peers. Yet which method do they push? Whole-word. Because then you have to be taught and cannot reason it out on your own.

The US school system was built on Prussian-style schooling. The entire purpose of it is to produce (like a factory) citizens who are just smart enough to perform useful, non-trivial work yet dumb enough not to look too deeply into things, not to enjoy learning, not to have natural curiosity, not to discover things on their own because they were taught to depend on someone else to hand knowledge to them. Definitely, above all else, they are not to have the capability of the kind of critical and abstract principle-based conceptual thought (what one may call a classical philosopher) that would make them tough-minded, independent, and able to individually question the social order in which they are asked to participate.

The wealthy businessmen who established the American school system we know today were, in the beginning, extremely open and up-front about their intentions. They quite plainly stated that it was about control. They admired the Hindus, the way the tiny minority of Brahmins could maintain control over all the lower castes, the way this was done through forced "education" and learned subservience. What they most strongly feared, right at the height of the Industrial Revolution, was "overproduction" - the idea that the independent, entrepreneurial, individual spirit that defined America had to be destroyed or else the factories with the massive investments put into them would have to compete with many different small businesses. This was a time when most men had a trade and a business and were their own boss or aspiring to be. It is not compatible with the concentration of wealth and top-down administration of large corporations.

The very finest reference available for this subject is John Taylor Gatto. To stand up and speak out as he has done requires some actual guts (notice how rare that is these days?). He also has an entire book on the subject available online for free.

There's nothing wrong with the US education system. It's functioning exactly the way it's supposed to:

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Bill gates told us http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html * Bug reports are statistically, therefore actually, unimportant; * If you want a bug fixed, you are (by definition) in the minority; * Microsoft doesn't care about bugs because bug fixes are not a significant source of revenue; * If you think you found a bug, it really only means you're incompetent; * Anyway, people only complain about bugs to show how cool they are, not because bugs cause any real problems.

We don't make the entire physical world child-friendly; we build playgrounds and schools and other kid-specific places for them so they can enjoy themselves safely, and adults can do the wide variety of things that adults do everywhere else that eight-year-olds probably shouldn't.

Actually... outside of the bedroom (or whereever you prefer to do it), what do adults do that kids should be excluded from?

Work? Kids can flip burgers, punch prices into a cash register and make change, put crates in a truck. Maybe you shouldn't let them near the hard drugs (doctor), your client's confidential data (lawyer) or your company's unreleased designs (EEngineer) or code (developer). Maybe kids don't benefit in great amounts from seeing knowledge-intensive work if they don't have enough background knowledge.

But I think exposing kids to the adult world and showing them what it is peoeple (er, adults) do for a living would teach kids a lot about the world; let them intern where applicable. A large dose of primary experience is probably good for their education. Why don't school do that?

One answer, according to Paul Graham, is that the real (not stated) purpose of school is to keep kids off the street: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Another answer, by John Taylor Gatto, is that school is deliberately meant to hinder us, see http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html /Off-topic (But I can sustain the karma burn)

We're seeing how money and markets can be transform a society into a society of serfs, any system can be gamed, transformed and abused, how so many people can't see this is disturbing.

How most people can't see this is quite a mystery unless you are willing to entertain the idea that people are not naturally this blind and must be trained to be this way. Then you realize this is the main reason for having a government-run public school system. The mystery then disappears but a sense of relief is not forthcoming, because it took a few generations to make things this way and may well take a few generations to begin to undo the damage.

They are far worse than that and it is definitely by careful design.

In fact I'd say that the public schools bear more responsibility than anyone else for the widespread ignorance and gullibility that these scammers feed on. A truly tough-minded population familiar with critical thinking, logic, and argumentation would not so easily fall for these scams. They also wouldn't support anything our politicians of today are pushing for. So you see that'd be really inconvenient for our increasingly centralized society *spits*.

That's good, but not everyone has non-religious private schools in their area - and I don't see how sending your child to a private Catholic school is anything more than a different kind of "institutionalized madness".

Then you can home-school. Or you can move to another location that has appropriate schools. These are not insurmountable problems. If you care enough, you'll find a way. If you don't, it'll be "too hard" because of this-and-that.

Further, his children would probably have a far better life if he dropped two of those jobs, sent them to public school, and then spent afternoons and evenings with them. Children need their parents far more than they need private school, and heck he could even do some after-class homeschooling.

I'd say you're not in a position to determine this about someone you have never met. Feel free to assume he's so stupid that he never thought about that, and never arranged his schedule accordingly if that gives you some kind of pleasure ("if only he were as smart as you", right?). I won't bother trying to convince you otherwise since a complete lack of evidence didn't prevent you from forming a conclusion, so you have already abandoned reason. It follows that reasoning with you would be futile.

I can see that you played a little CYA there, so you can make your unfounded judgment while retaining an excuse for it, so I'll address that next. Incidentally that excuse would be both a failed attempt to prevent me from saying what I just said, and a successful attempt to justify/rationalize your judgment in your own eyes. At any rate, we are talking about an individual, not a statistical sample or an extrapolation therefrom, so your use of "probably" is a weasel word in this context. It does not change what I just said. It also doesn't change what you said.

I do not know the answer to this. It is pure speculation only (see how unambiguous that was?). But all of this makes me wonder whether you have children of your own that have been put through the meat-grinder that is our public schools and felt a bit guilty at my description of them. If so, then perhaps you saw them become more irritable, more superficial, and more dependent on others emotionally and practically as the years went by. Maybe you wonder whether those extra material luxuries were really worth avoiding the expense of relocation or alternate schooling. That would certainly explain the need to make things up about an honorable man whom you've never met.

Here's what I think you would really find edifying. They're both by another honorable man named John Taylor Gatto. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher. The second is a full-length book available online for free called The Underground History of American Education. Enjoy.

I believe that where we screwed up big-time was when we ever allowed the government to have any input whatsoever into how we educate our children.

Actually, I have to disagree on that part. Probably because my girlfriend is a teacher, just starting, and I've seen the incredible amount of effort that goes into showing teachers how to teach right. There's a whole science behind that, and not with the best instincts can you be as good as a good teacher.

That said, public schools in the US are probably the mess I keep hearing about. That does not mean the entire concept of a public school is bullshit, just because one specific implementation of it is. Have you ever seen public schools outside the US? Say, in countries that are famous for good schools, such as the scandinavian countries?

The funny thing about girlfriends is that unless you are very careful and unusually aware, then as you are "getting into them" so to speak, they are also getting into you. I am forced to consider you a biased source for that reason. Besides, this is a US story and I am speaking about US schools. Therefore it is I who must ask you if you are familiar with US public schools, and it would seem the answer is "no".

Psychological abuse and humiliation is a staple of US schools, both institutionalized and from other students. It's an integral part of the design. You need a population whose spirits have been broken at an impressionable age before you can embrace authoritarianism.

The main purpose of public schooling in the USA is to create a large underclass of people who are just smart enough to perform useful productive work, and just dumb enough not to think critically or question anything or become very curious. The Carnegies and Morgans and others who backed its founders in the 1800s were amazingly honest about this.

Under this system, the fact that most Americans are short-sighted, egotistical, hedonistic, and emotionally childish is considered a bonus feature. It makes them docile and easy to rule. It makes them feel overwhelmed just living their own lives. It prevents them from being sophisticated enough to understand the Hegelian Dialectic ("Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis" aka "Problem, Reaction, Solution"), bread-and-circus, propaganda techniques, and other tools used to expand and maintain state power.

If you really, truly want to understand public schooling in the USA, there is absolutely no better reference than John Taylor Gatto. He has an essay available here and a complete book, available for free online in its entirety, available here. I think you will find these to be quite an eye-opener.

What exactly do schools really teach in the first place? Would we be better off without it?

Good Lord. That dip was New York State Teacher of the Year?

Not every parent is capable of, nor interested in, schooling their own children, and the kids would not learn much.

You're jumping to conclusions when you assert that learning nothing is worse than the status quo.

If, in fact, what's learned in school is a net negative then learning nothing would be an improvement.

What exactly do schools really teach in the first place? Would we be better off without it?

I understand that you aren't thrilled with the idea of paying/motivating kids to get good grades. And I respect your position as a parent and a tax payer. But if you think it's just the "A" or "gold stars" that a child gets from doing the "busy work" then you're missing the point. The better they do on tests, and the better their homework is, the more they have learned.

... by rote memorization, with a method designed to make them dependent on someone else to tell them what is worth learning and when they have learned it. Neither future job placement nor immediate financial rewards teach them that learning is a joy, that the world is a place full of wonderous and interesting things, that you can value your own edification for its own sake and not just as a means to accomplish something else. Instead, the public schools teach by experience that learning is tedious and boring and that there must always be something to force you to do it, like future poverty or immediate disapproval of parents and teachers.

Ever wonder why someone will make a 30 minute call to technical support, just to ask a basic question that they could answer themselves with 5-10 minutes of research? It's because they have learned the dependency lesson. Not only does it never occur to them to take the situation into their own hands, they would resent the suggestion. That's why they immediately seek assistance instead of seeking help only as a last resort after first making a sincere effort to obtain their own answers.

I think this link would explain a great deal of what I am saying.

I disagree with the slant of the article that this is a scandal. Have the Chicago Bulls been just as good without Jordan? Of course not. Special people are special. You are lucky when you get them, but most of the time you have to work around not having them.

I think this gentleman and John Taylor Gatto have a lot in common. The "special" thing about Gatto is his ability to see a spade and call it a spade instead of getting lost in all of the justifications and excuses. This one-line summary in no way does justice to either of the above-linked works, but Gatto went to some of the poorest inner-city schools in some of the worst neighborhoods and found that the children there were eager and very able learners once you stopped treating them like idiots. You'd think the school systems would appreciate anyone who can demonstrate that, but they didn't.

So I think your analogy to the Chicago Bulls doesn't really work. The Bulls experienced a particularly outstanding individual but presumably, all the other players would have wanted to attain that level of talent. The school systems are experiencing problems that are institutional and profoundly anti-educational. I don't believe the problem with schools is funding or ability. I think the problem is that they are not really interested in improving their methods or looking too closely at their results.

Is anyone even showing up for classes at the school? I woulda yanked my kid out of there in a heartbeat.

If you really care about them, don't put them through public school. Not just because of idiocy like this, the blatant hypocrisy, the moronic "zero tolerance" policies, the discipline issues those have utterly failed to correct, but also because it's a much lower-quality and less challenging education. Public school is training for sheeple. It teaches six lessons and that's the real curriculum. I would gladly accept a lower standard of living and fewer material luxuries to know that my conscience is clear, to know I did not put a child through a substandard joke like our public schools.

I think that this article http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html is pertinent.

MOD PARENT UP!

Very insightful. I used to be very critical of Charlotte Iserbyt (author of "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"), because I thought her title and viewpoint were overly inflammatory, that, yes, there was too much incompetence and bad ideas in the educational system and our outcomes were falling behind those of other countries. But I've changed my mind lately. I'm convinced that it is deliberate. So my apologies for statements I made about Charlotte Iserbyt in the past.

The thing about the "conspiracy nuts" is that their ideas would never get so much traction if 100% of what they say is false. There is an absence of clear and credible answers, too many inconsistencies in the official stories, and not enough real information. So all kinds of crazy ideas spring out of that.

The problem with Sunstein's plan is that he wants to create infiltrators that parrot the official story, not just to shut down the crazy theories, but to get rid of the questions. And questioning government is vital to a democracy. When government has control of every side of the message, then, yes, all conspiracy theories go away, but so do any questions about what they are doing. And that's bad.

Anyone who honestly and thoroughly researches the topic and has enough guts to go wherever the facts may lead them will ultimately be forced to come to the same conclusion. The really funny thing is, the deliberate nature of it is almost obvious, provided one has the skill of totally disregarding anything that is said and instead examining the sum total of the actions that are taken. That's easier said than done and your first obstacle is the fact that you'd rather not believe it (this is one reason it takes some guts). Still, it's not well-hidden at all, it's hidden in plain sight. In the past, the designers of forced government schooling were much more open about their intentions.

For all of this, I know of no better reference than John Taylor Gatto. He has an essay here and a full book, available for free online in its entirety, located here.

It already has been proven. Three groups of kids. First group traditional education. Second is guided but loose (like a lot of decent homeschoolers - not all, mind you) and Third was kids who just had someone to ask questions of and list topics/projects. Guess which group scored better at the end of the testing? Yep... group three. With little more than the Google equivalent of a "teacher". You ever see how quickly school can suck the imagination, creativity and desire to learn out of a kid? And before you ask... "Values for a New Millenium"b Dr. Robert Humphrey. Info is in the last part of the book. Now, when he proved several techniques that took Inner City kids from drug addicts to straight A students... who do you think shut him down? Kids? No. Parents? No. School Board? You betcha. (And that isn't knocking all School Board people...) Read the book.

You'd love what John Taylor Gatto has to say on this subject. He also has a shorter essay here. He highlights how many of modern public schooling's techniques are profoundly anti-educational and seem designed to encourage dependency. He also advises that it takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and mathematics skills; after that, the person is capable of educating themselves given access to books and other resources. One trivial example of the damage this does can be found in those computer users who get confounded by very simple issues that are found in Page 1 of the manual, the README file, the help file, the FAQ, and the vendor's Web site, yet they still need handholding, not because they are incapable of reading and understanding the information, but because they feel helpless.

I am very grateful that there are people like this who will stand up and say something, who will expose these important ideas. Make no mistake, that takes courage. It's little wonder that you generally don't see folks like that on the prime-time evening news, for what they have to say, however true, is also quite inconvenient to many powerful interests.

Incidentally, you may appreciate my sig; it's quite apropos.

Critical thinking and genuine problem solving, along with finding and assimilating information are the skills that matter today.

Absolutely correct.

Unfortunately those skills are too difficult to test on multiple choice standardized tests, so our system stays stuck in it's obsolete state.

A general population with true critical thinking and problem-solving skills is also quite difficult to rule. The first societal effect of such widespread knowledge would be a drastic reduction in the power and influence that government and corporations have over the people, as it would lead to the realizations that many of the excuses and justifications that were given for past power grabs just don't hold water.

The teachers will continue to prepare students for the government exams by teaching to the test.

Which they do because the government that runs the schools has decided that it's very important to them to do things this way, and have mandated that the teachers adhere to it. Even the teachers who understand why this method is flawed must either adhere to it or be fired. It doesn't take much critical thought to see that this is a "fox guarding the henhouse" type of situation.

Our schools have become a sorting mechanism (a poor one at that) and have lost nearly all traces of meaningful education.

The people who designed public schooling as we know it today and made it compulsory were surprisingly open about their intentions. They wanted "the rabble" (i.e. anyone not of an old-money family) to be smart enough to do useful work for the emerging industrial economy but not so smart that that they would be difficult to govern. Particularly, they were worried that people would continue the old American tradition of individual, self-sufficient enterprise because the industrial operations required enormous investments. They were also worried that people who knew how to question would question the political order and otherwise may not "know their station" as subordinates to the de facto aristocracy. The mandatory training in subordination that allowed a small percentage of the population to rule the other three castes in India and the statism of the Prussian system were viewed as enviable triumphs by the political interests that originally established public schooling.

The best authority on this subject is John Taylor Gatto. You might like his essay and he also wrote a book on the subject and made it available online.

I would venture to say that most humans are born curious, but then have it beaten out of them, both figuratively through the demands of societal conformity(specifically through the education system, church, etc.), and literally by the parents. It all happens at a very early age usually beyond conscious memory of the adult. Either way, it's usually our environment that kills the urge. Genetics plays a comparatively small part.

This is absolutely the truth! Any thorough investigation into the matter will convince you that this has been both deliberate and systematically executed, for the purpose of creating a society of people who are easier to control because they do not have strong minds that are willing to question. The public schools are essential to this effort and it could not have been so successful without them.

Albert Einstein once said "it's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Also, you are not really venturing with that one. You are exercising the natural intuitive brightness and discernment that is your birthright as a human being. I say this because you may not be aware of how profound your insight actually is or of the real means by which you understood it. Let's say it was more direct than ordinary deductive processes. It only feels like a venture because people who do not possess that brightness may ask you to prove it to them logically or mathematically which is quite difficult compared to being able to see it on your own and know that it is the truth. The challenge is learning to trust that intuition.

It's a delight for me whenever I see an example of this. It makes me believe that there is still some hope, that maybe this unsustainable society doesn't need to collapse under the weight of its own excesses, or that if it does that it will be replaced by something much better. You won't see them promoted in the media because the media is heavily invested in the status quo, but I am encountering more and more people who have real understanding to some degree or another.

If I may, I'd like to recommend something to you. Another man has explored the same realization you have shared here, and for the subject of public schools he is quite exceptional because he was a schoolteacher for decades who was very good at what he did. He had to resign after he realized the damage that was being done in the name of education. His name is John Taylor Gatto. I'd highly recommend to you his essay and also his free online book. There is no better reference for this subject anywhere. Both are enlightening reads that I think you will truly enjoy.

I'm going to address this a bit out-of-order because there was one point that I felt was most important.

Some people are just not capable of critical reasoning skills at the level you demonstrate - but are worthy contributors to our society.

That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be. I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good. One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing. I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.

And who decides? "I'm sorry, you are not smart enough to know what companies are evil, therefore you are not permitted to buy stuff." Surely this approach is ludicrous to even the most socialized of first world societies - right?

Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.

In short, the problem you have with free markets are that they are free for everyone involved, and those who lack the mental acumen to see that they are being abused will continue to be abused.

If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and th

Some people are just not capable of critical reasoning skills at the level you demonstrate - but are worthy contributors to our society.

That "at the level you demonstrate" part is tricky for me. Yes, at the risk of sounding egotistical (though it is not meant that way) I am aware that I am more skilled at this than most. In fact, for just that reason, I feel something of a responsibility to share it with people who appreciate it, particularly those who just need to see a decent example to realize their own abilities. However, I don't think I am anything too special. I just think that so many others are so stupid. What I have a problem with is that most of them don't have to be.

I think that, barring any diagnosed physical or mental disabilities, all people are capable of critical reasoning. To see my point would require some research into the public education system that we have today, how it got there, what its original stated goals were, and an understanding of a turning point in American history (other countries followed suit) during the 1800s when the desires of industrial tycoons replaced community standards when determining how to educate children. Let's say that it is "desirable" (and not by me), for the maintainence of the current status quo, for people to be just smart enough to do useful work and absolutely no smarter; certainly no wiser. That way they believe what they are told all too readily, don't question very much or do so in shallow or pre-patterned ways, and will accept almost anything if told that it's for their own good.

One of the effects of this which is easiest to see for yourself is the way education is done primarily by rote memorization and certainly not by showing people how anyone with basic literacy and mathematics skills is fully capable of educating themselves. That amounts to nothing less than conditioned dependence or conditioned helplessness. If you want to see a simple real-world effect of this, look at how the average person gives up so easily when it comes to the most basic computer skills even though this information is widely and freely available to anyone who can reach Google. These are not folks who can grok "problem, reaction, solution" (aka "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" of Hegel) or "bread and circus" and do not understand why the constant supply of false dichotomies offered on mainstream news about most issues is not real debate but debate framing.

I know of no better single reference for modern education than John Taylor Gatto. He has an excellent essay and a completely free online book.

And who decides? "I'm sorry, you are not smart enough to know what companies are evil, therefore you are not permitted to buy stuff." Surely this approach is ludicrous to even the most socialized of first world societies - right?

Of course that would be ludicrous. I think the real "triumph" of the current system is that it has so thoroughly discarded reasonable solutions that we start asking questions like this for lack of apparent alternatives.

In short, the problem you have with free markets are that they are free for everyone involved, and those who lack the mental acumen to see that they are being abused will continue to be abused.

If that happened in isolation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In my more cynical days, I would say "yeah, stupidity is supposed to have a price." However, it does not happen in isolation. It helps to determine the kinds of business practices and expectations that we all must deal with whether or not we have the acumen to recognize abuse. When people who lack that capability constitute the majority of the population, they harm both themselves and those who

One of my graduate students showed me an article this week which compared the achievement between poor whites and poor blacks on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (which is a popular whipping boy of the anti-standardized test movement). Long story short: There was a whopping 3-point difference between the two groups, and both were 20 points below the national mean. (The PPVT uses an IQ-equivalent scale, so 100 is the mean, with a standard deviation of 15.)

This doesn't surprise me in the least. I would consider it a corollary to the fact that the drug war is primarily targeted at poor urban blacks and poor rural whites. The fact is that those two groups are the least happy to sit quietly and take orders from some guy behind a desk.

  Modern schooling in the US is not really about teaching knowledge or skills, it's largely about teaching submission and loyalty. Both those groups are jealous of their freedom and don't take kindly to the school system as a result. Hell, when modern schooling (i.e. indoctrination into the Red, White and Blue cult) was first introduced, many of those rural whites rioted and burned the new schools to the ground, and drove the teachers out of town. Parents whose kids were held after school came in and forcibly removed their kids rather than allow them to be imprisoned "for their own good" by some do-gooders trying to create a "more perfect union" by turning them into good little drones.
  John Taylor Gatto, teacher of the year in New York for 1991, has done a lot of work on the forgotten history of schooling in the US, and how it was reshaped by socialists and autocrats about a hundred years ago.
  http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Never has the Six-Lesson Schoolteacher essay seems more relevant... http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html This is about enforcing and strengthening the part where people learn that they have no rights and no privacy.

Well, that depends on how you define worse. AFAIK, in the US, most public schools do effectively teach their students to read and write at a basic level (which on average may be much better than in your country).

Grandparent is making a point about the purpose of mandatory school not necessarily being education (in the sense that it makes you a creative problem solver with a rich understanding of the world). This reasoning has a dash of...
http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
... and a hint of...
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

I don't know that I believe the stuff that JTG is preaching. I just read something of his yesterday going into it with a fully open mind, and I left it doubting many of his conclusions.

Many of the lessons that he describes can simply be explained by "It's the most efficient form of education that works." Aside from that, there have in fact been many improvements to society under our formal education system in the recent years, so despite all he does to bitch about it, we seem to be doing pretty well.

Not only do they not do their job, they're effectively making kids dumber by causing brain damage.

Unless making kids dummer is their job.

This is the first time I've seen anyone other than me reference this excellent man and the wisdom he is willing to share. You referenced the book The Underground History of American Education. That's an amazing thing to read, for it explains not just the problem but how it came to be this way and the sort of politics that made it override the wishes of parents.

If you ever need (depending on your audience) a shorter introduction to John Taylor Gatto and his message, you may also like his essay, The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher.

I know that you referenced truth because doing so was its own reward. It does not make you want to horde it like gold and silver, but rather to share it with whomever will listen. Knowing this, I say BLESS YOU for bringing such excellence into this discussion. To lots of us, even those of us already familiar with these things, it is a welcome sight.

From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.

If that's what you believe the public school system is for, I'd like to introduce you to a man named John Taylor Gatto. I know of two works of his which will disabuse you of this notion if you will only read them. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and the second is a full book called The Underground History of American Education. Both are quite eye-opening. The only caution I will give is that you may feel a temptation to become angry when you read these works; that will help nothing and no one, particularly you. The better approach is to understand that "if they really understood what they were doing, they wouldn't."

I think sometimes it might be the that professions have the perception that someone spent time learning this through apprenticeships or many years at university and are therefore better people than that damned bespectacled nerd who only knows what to do from tinkering with those stupid computers in his parent's basement.

Formal education is severely overvalued in terms of the actual expertise of those who have it. John Taylor Gatto (or the excellent and much shorter essay here) is a particularly good reference for this, but if you forget everything you think you know about the matter and really look into it, for yourself, as someone who will follow the facts wherever they may lead, you'll find that modern methods of instruction are some of the worst ways to lean anything. I believe that the primary purpose of i.e. college is not to impart knowledge. The primary purpose is to teach you to allow others to run your life and set your schedule and that "the experts" will tell you whether your work is any good and how useful you are. It amounts to obedience training. In a modern society where most human beings are expected to be interchangable, replacable parts of the social machinery of corporations and other large organizations, this has immediate practical value despite what I must call a dehumanizing influence. Either way, my point is that I don't know anyone who has ever carefully thought about the matter who is terribly impressed by credentials alone. It's one of those numerous examples where some of the most important things that we collectively do are not the result of a conscious choice where everyone involved calls things what they are.

That and while people appreciate their cars or of course, their health, with computers it seems to be more that they HAVE to use it and resent every minute of it.

I maintain that for a user to have these frustrations and take them out on the guy who's trying to help them, merely because he's a captive audience who is forced to take it, is unjust and indicative of a petty, small-minded individual. If you really want to find out what sort of person you're dealing with, don't look at how they treat their friends or their family or their boss -- look at how they treat a captive audience. If someone's work involves computers and they resent using computers, they should deal with that by either learning to like them or finding another line of work. So, I again think this is a matter of personal responsibility and to be honest with you, these chronological adults who are really nothing more than overgrown children need to grow up and learn what that is.

Since I read it, I must point out your arguments are very much taken out of context.

I didn't try to hide the context, linking to an easily searchable text. I will attempt to elaborate on the context as I understood it:

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."

This is very much like the Creationist argument that Darwin said the eye was too complex to have evolved. Marx isn't saying this, he's saying that his opponents(the rich) will accuse Communism of this. He's arguing that such thing should not be used by one class to suppress another.

And yet the historical experience of communism abounds with religious persecution, so much that it is a defining characteristic. His argument appears to be not that communism won't abolish religion but that religion is a "class antagonism" that must be abolished, that is he justifies the abolishment of religion rather than denies it.

The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention

To continues the quote "and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class. ", he is arguing that education is influenced by the ruling class and that education should be free and public for all. He is arguing that home schooling. should be replaced with equal public education for all. In this manner western education is very inline with the communist manifesto. One could make the argument that his form of public education is inline with that found in the U.S. constitution.

I thought the quote "The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education" adequately covered that. Indeed since freedom of religion has become widespread all statists have sought to replace it with another method of public indoctrination, compulsory schooling being the most prevalent. I agree that western education is very in line with the communist manifesto, something that in no way validates communism but should instead cause us to seriously question our chosen method of education and who it is really designed to benefit. I recommend investigating the work of John Taylor Gatto, starting with The Six Lesson Schoolteacher. There's a collection of quotes from his essays here: http://www.noogenesis.com/game_theory/Gatto/Gatto.html. One of his books is available online and audio files of his speeches also, both are linked from the wikipedia article. I've heard it said "It's hard to agree with everything he says, but it's hard to ignore what he says".

Most of the evils of communism are not exclusive to communism. The differences between the various forms of totalitarianism are minor compared to their similarities. Indeed the evils of totalitarianism could be said to be good things that are taken to extremes. I'm not an anarchist, I think it's a good thing to have a government. Just not an all controlling one, yet they all seem to have the tendency to grow into that role.

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."

He's speaking more of inheritance and child slavery. He's not talking about abolishing the family but looking at children as something other than people who can make profit for you and carry on your wealth. Additionally he argues that capitalism has already destroyed the family for the poor, looking around at the U

You got modded as funny, but I'm not so sure it's a laughing matter. John Taylor Gatto talks about this in his essay, and also in his new book.

John Taylor Gatto wrote an excellent essay on the topic, entitled "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher" ( http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html )American schools no longer teach material. The actual content of the lesson means nothing, students (especially high school students) aren't given enough time to absorb what is actually being taught. Then there is standardized testing. The problem with standardized testing is that the tests are written to the lowest skill level. In Illinois, in high school, there was nothing in English, Grammar, or Reading Comprehension that wasn't taught in grade school (and this was a sophomore level test). The maths are trivially easy for anyone in the advanced classes (AP or college-level). The only thing that standardized tests reflect is the ability to take standardized tests.

The day we use technology to unite in collective effort, disseminate intelligence and wisdom to dissolve ignorance and share a single intention then the consumer the citizen will take control as master.

It's not to educate you, it's to keep you in line.

You're kidding me? I'm not disputing what you say as I've never been through the US education system. I just find it astonishing that Vietnam doesn't feature in a large way in the history classes. Though maybe it is the large scale protests against it that would be most troubling to some in power today.

I've known this to be the truth ever since I was in the 7th grade. I hated school, but I didn't fully understand why. The real reasons did not make sense to me until I read some stuff by John Taylor Gatto. He has a paper called the http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.htmlSix Lesson Schoolteacher that was really eye opening. He has a rather large book called The Underground History of American Education you should check out.

What I believe, now that I am not in school, is that first off we should have never had public school, secondly they should never have been tied into the government. Thats how propaganda gets spread around. I honestly believe that every child is a genius, and that our public schools do a great job of convincing them that their individual genius is worthless (eg. You're only a genius if you can add these two 50 digit numbers together in your head in less than 2 seconds). My Mom is a teacher, and she teaches special kids, savants and what not.

Anyways, go back to being told /what/ to think, instead of learning /how/ to think.

yeah, i'd agree with that. english teachers = terrorists.

i'll take it a step further. teachers in general = terrorists. (although, they probably have the best intentions in mind.)

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

No. This is what teachers do. I know - mea culpa. Summarised from http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html Where you can find the complete text. by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.

The Six Lesson Schoolteacher: http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

John Taylor Gatto was New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. He was a teacher for 26 years and won lots of awards, etc. but eventually the dysfunction of the system got to him and he quit, and wrote this excellent essay which expresses very clearly what is wrong with the U.S. educational system, AND how it could be fixed (which is, sadly, unlikely to happen any time soon).